by Tom Barber
Archer had fired instantly, watching the man take the rounds and fall to the floor. Not wasting a second, he jumped over the man and edged out onto 15, clearing the space.
But Vargas wasn’t there.
He pulled his phone and called her, waiting, but she wasn’t picking up. Shit! He thought, sucking in air, looking around the deserted, quiet dark office floor as blood leaked down the side of his face.
He turned and looked at the two lifts, checking the digital displays above.
Where the hell is she?
Piccadilly was still on 3, having just taken Portland’s call and pausing for a moment from firing on the arriving police below. The call had ended mid-conversation, cut off from the sound of gunfire, but Piccadilly had heard enough.
He was by a maintenance access box, which he opened and pulled a switch, killing the fire alarm which was driving him nuts, the building suddenly quiet again. Turning, Piccadilly saw one of the lifts ticking down towards them and pushed the button, stepping back with the assault rifle and aiming it directly at the doors.
It arrived, and the doors parted.
A second later, he unloaded with the assault rifle, the bullets ripping into the cart as he emptied the clip.
Once it clicked dry, he stopped and looked.
There was no one there.
Unknown to the South African mercenary, the lift had made one stop on its way from 15 to 3.
On the 12th floor.
This office floor looked to be almost completed, the floor carpeted, the walls painted. Vargas was standing very still, looking straight ahead, her AR15 still in her hands but staring out of the corner of her eye at the nail-gun which was aimed at the side of her head.
‘Drop it,’ the woman holding it said quietly.
Vargas didn’t move.
The nail-gun suddenly swept down, aimed at one of the boy’s heads.
‘OK,OK,’ Vargas said, tossing the assault rifle forward. ‘But let them go. I’m the one you want.’
Pause.
‘Very well.’
Vargas looked down at the two boys. ‘Go!’
They didn’t move.
‘Go! Use the stairs!’
They stared at her for a moment then took off, running to the stairwell doors and disappearing out of sight, the frame swinging back behind them.
Now alone with the woman, Vargas watched her walk round in front of her, the nail gun trained on her face.
She saw she was older, somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties, and short but incredibly menacing.
Vargas had never seen her before.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Someone who wants you to die.’
Vargas didn’t reply.
‘I’ve been trying to decide all day when to kill you,’ the woman said, the nail-gun trained on Vargas. ‘And I’m glad I waited. Now you’re going to die in front of him. Call him.’
‘He’s already dead.’
‘No. He isn’t.’
Vargas didn’t move but felt a sudden surge of hope.
‘Last chance. You do this, you get a few more minutes of life.’
Knowing she had no other option, Vargas withdrew her phone, and went to push Redial.
‘No need for that,’ a familiar voice suddenly said from her right.
FIFTY SIX
Turning, the two women saw Archer standing in the doorway to the stairs.
Blood leaking down the side of his face from the cut under his left eye, he moved forward, his MP5 in his shoulder, aimed straight at Talia as she kept the nail gun trained on Vargas. When he’d been standing on 15, he’d seen one of the lifts stop on the 12th floor before it continued below, and guessed Vargas could be here. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the hope on her face.
It was the first time he and Alice had been together since she left New York last week after their fight.
But this was no time for a reunion.
His sights on the older woman’s chin, his finger on the trigger, Archer didn’t take his eyes off Talia Farha.
She looked to be somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties, her skin wrinkled and leathered, her dark hair streaked with silver.
She was small but her lack of height was more than compensated for by her intimidating presence.
She stared at him with hard eyes that glittered with venom. Her two dead sons had been killers, but just by looking at this woman he could tell that her spawn had only been a pale imitation of the original.
As she kept the nail-gun trained on Vargas but stared at Archer, he had a sudden flashback to two years ago. He’d looked into those same obsidian eyes just before he shot her son through one of them.
‘Guess we’ve come full circle,’ he said, keeping his MP5 on her. ‘This was the last thing your kid ever saw too.’
‘Don’t you dare mention him,’ she snarled, the nail-gun rock steady and still aimed at Vargas.
‘You shouldn’t have come after me,’ he told her. ‘I never would have known you existed.’
‘You shot my son.’
‘Considering what he did, he got off easy.’
‘I’m going to kill you.’
‘I can’t see that happening,’ he said, his MP5 trained on her, his finger white on the trigger.
‘You shoot me, I blast your girlfriend,’ Talia said, her nail gun still aimed at Vargas’ head but her eyes on Archer. ‘Drop your gun.’
Archer stopped, eight feet from her, his MP5 trained on her chin. The office space was rectangular, no cover nearby save for the stairwell behind him and the door to a second office to his immediate right.
And Talia had the nail-gun pointed up close at Vargas’ head.
‘I’m going to start with your toes,’ she hissed at Archer. ‘Then your fingers. Then your lower legs and arms to the elbow. I’ll cut out your eyes and your tongue. I’ll give you shots of adrenaline to keep you alive.’
Archer went to reply but then he saw her eyes suddenly flick to the lifts to his left.
One of them had just arrived.
Instinctively, Archer followed her glance for a split second.
But by the time his attention swung back to Talia, she’d already pulled the trigger.
Anticipating the move, Vargas was already on her way down as Talia ducked and fired, the nail missing her by a hair’s breadth.
Archer fired a second later, hitting Talia in the arm and knocking her around in a pirouette to the floor as the lift doors began to open. Pushing herself back to her feet, Vargas ran towards Archer as a blond man with an AR-15 appeared out of the lift.
Archer saw he was the last member of the trio who’d attacked him at Bernhardt’s house with Dash and the other guy, both now dead upstairs. The man saw Archer turning his MP5 onto him and threw himself back into the lift as Archer fired, the bullets tearing into the space where he’d just been standing as Talia clutched her wounded arm then reached for the nail-gun beside her on the floor.
Grabbing Vargas’ hand, Archer turned and took off through the door to the office immediately to their right, kicking it shut behind them. A moment later, gunfire ripped into the wood, spraying pieces into the air as the pair threw themselves to the floor inside the other room.
As Archer rolled and fired back through the door, buying him and Vargas a few seconds, Vargas froze and stared around her in horror.
Firing again, Archer glanced at her then followed her eyes.
Workmen had left plastic sheets covering the walls.
But instead of sawdust they were liberally spattered with blood.
There were pieces of a human being shoved in a heap across the room. Beside it was a body, a man missing the lower half of each leg below his knees, pints of blood having leaked out and covering the floor, partially dried and sweet to smell. It was the most sickening and stomach-churning thing he’d ever seen, even outdoing a scene her son had left the police in the bathroom of a house they raided the day before Archer shot him.
&nbs
p; Swallowing, Vargas looked at Archer, horror written all over her face, and their attention quickly snapped back to the door as more gunfire ripped into it.
Archer went to return fire, but then his MP5 clicked dry.
Cursing and tossing it to one side, he drew Dash’s pistol.
Outside, Piccadilly was covering the door. Clutching her wounded arm, which was hanging uselessly by her side, Talia moved over and joined him, holding out her uninjured hand as Piccadilly passed her his Ruger.
As she took the weapon, Talia felt a surge of sheer anticipation.
Archer and his girlfriend were next door.
And they were trapped.
FIFTY SEVEN
Crouching in the blood-spattered office beside Vargas and holding Dash’s pistol, Archer desperately looked around for another way out. There wasn’t one, and the handgun was all he had apart from a flash-bang, a smoke grenade and a knife.
The man next door had an automatic weapon, ammunition, both exits covered and no doubt a pistol for Talia.
There was no sign of back up yet either.
‘Shit!’
‘What do we do?’ Vargas said frantically, still staring at the blood-stained transparent sheets and the body parts. ‘Sam?’
Cursing, he looked around desperately. Behind them was a bathroom, obviously servicing the main office beyond as well as this one when it was in use, and to their left was a load of workman’s gear, tools, bags of nails and a small rubbish bin with some old food wrappers visible inside.
There was nothing.
As Vargas backed away further from the door, her grey nightclothes dirtied and stained with dried blood, Archer suddenly paused.
Looking at the rubbish bin and nails to his left, he thought back to his flight from New York to London earlier in the day.
And his conversation with Marquez about fear.
In the main office, Piccadilly suddenly let rip on the door with his AR-15, blowing pieces of it apart. It was returned a second later, rounds from a silenced pistol hitting the door, which was exactly what he and Talia wanted, knowing the pair trapped inside would eventually run out of ammo.
All they had to do was provoke Archer into firing until his guns clicked dry and the return fire would cease.
Kneeling inside the bathroom as Vargas fired at the door with Dash’s pistol, Archer frantically pulled open the doors under the washbasin and found some cleaning products lined up inside.
Including an industrial-size container of bleach.
Grabbing it, he moved back into the room, then rummaged through the rubbish bin, praying he’d find what he was looking for.
If he didn’t, they were going to die.
Seconds later, his heart skipped a beat. It was there.
Reaching inside, he withdrew a rolled up ball of foil from an eaten sandwich, just as Vargas fired the last round and the slide on the pistol stayed back.
‘Rip this into smaller pieces!’ he told Vargas quickly, passing her the ball of foil.
Puzzled but doing what he said without question, she dropped the pistol and after quickly unravelling the ball, started tearing up the aluminium wrap. Realising they needed more time, Archer saw the gunfire had blown a hole into the upper part of the door; he pulled the last stun grenade from his pocket, ripped the pin, stalked forward then popped it through the hole, both of them covering up as the flash-bang went off.
Using every precious second it bought him, Archer unscrewed the bleach, instantly getting a hit of the harsh chemical smell.
As Vargas continued to rip the foil into smaller pieces, Archer grabbed a bag of nails the workmen had left behind.
He then tipped them all into the bottle as fast as he could.
Talia and Piccadilly had just been advancing on the door when the stun grenade had come through, taking them by surprise and giving them no time to cover up.
As they waited for their senses to return, Talia smiled through the momentary discomfort.
Archer’s return fire had stopped.
He was out of ammo.
With the whole bag of nails now inside the bleach, Archer grabbed the strips of foil Vargas had prepared and stuffed them inside. As soon as he fed the last piece in, he screwed on the cap and shook it frantically, starting the chemical reaction.
Moving forward, he placed the bottle in the centre of the room then took a smoke grenade from his vest, ripping the pin and laying it beside the bleach.
Walking forward silently, both Talia and Piccadilly approached the door, just as there was a crack and a hissing sound.
Smoke suddenly started to drift through the gaps in the shot-up door.
She grinned. They’d used a smoke grenade to hamper visibility, but all they were doing was delaying the inevitable by a few seconds. They’d unwittingly taken cover inside the room Talia had used to kill Finchley; she smiled at the irony.
In front of her, Piccadilly kicked the damaged frame back. Smoke was filling the space, making it hard to see. The fire alarm didn’t start again though, which meant it must have been disabled. Walking forward with the South African, both of them undeterred by the smoke grenade, they traced the gloom with their weapons.
Searching for their prey as the smoke grenade hissed and filled the silence in the room.
Inside the bathroom, Archer joined Vargas inside the shower stall and covered her, closing his eyes as her fingers gripped onto his tac vest tightly.
He willed the chemical reaction between the foil and bleach to speed up.
C’mon!
Clutching his vest, Vargas held him close as smoke flowed into the room behind them.
C’mon!
As Talia and Piccadilly moved through the smoke, brushing aside the transparent sheets spattered with Finchley’s blood, the South African mercenary’s foot suddenly hit something as he stepped forward.
He glanced down, Talia pausing just behind him, her gaze followed his.
There was a large container of bleach sitting on the floor beside the grenade.
Puzzled, Talia glanced at the South African, who shrugged.
Shifting their attention, they focused on the bathroom to their right.
The rest of the office was empty.
Archer and Vargas would be in there.
In the smoke, Piccadilly turned to Talia and nodded, smiling. But as she went to react, she suddenly saw movement out of the corner of her eye. He saw her expression and turned back to face the bottle of bleach.
The container on the floor suddenly expanded.
Like a balloon about to burst.
FIFTY EIGHT
Inside the shower stall and shielding Vargas, Archer heard the blast and two screams as boiling hot bleach and the nails he’d dropped into the fluid exploded outwards from the chemical reaction in a makeshift nail-bomb. Waiting a few seconds longer, Vargas holding onto him tightly, Archer turned and saw no one had entered the bathroom.
Smoke continued to drift into the room from the grenade.
He looked back at Vargas, who stared up at him, her eyes wide with confusion. Rising and pushing open the shower door, Archer crept cautiously towards the door of the smoke-filled bathroom. As he edged towards the entrance, completely unarmed, he peered round and saw the blond man from the lift on the floor.
He was dead, his skin and clothing covered with burning chemicals, nails buried in his face, neck and torso, his eyes open as the bleach bubbled on his burned face.
However, Talia was nowhere to be seen.
Grabbing a hand towel from the bathroom, Archer pulled off the dead man’s shoes, passing them to Vargas behind him. She wouldn’t need them for long, just to walk over the floor out of this office. As she slipped them on distastefully, Archer reached forward and scooped up the dead man’s AR-15, his hand protected from the bleach on the grip by the rag.
All the while, the office continued to be clouded by smoke from the grenade.
And he couldn’t see Talia anywhere.
Checking the clip and
then tracing through the gloom, Archer took a deep breath then led the way as they walked through the aftermath of the explosion towards the door to the main office, holding their breath from the noxious fumes. With Vargas behind him, covering her mouth, they both moved slowly, Archer scanning the room with the assault rifle as he searched for Talia.
He could see the transparent, blood-covered sheets closest to him had been partially ripped by the explosion, the air stinking with the smell of burning chemicals, parts of the sheets smoking from the boiling bleach.
Checking that the main office beyond was empty, Archer stopped in the open doorway, unable to see shit through the smoke.
Vargas joined him, covering her mouth as she too searched through the thick smoke.
Where the hell was Talia?
Suddenly, there were two quick muzzle flashes from the other side of the small office.
Two rounds from a suppressed pistol pounded into Archer’s chest. His vest absorbed the impact but it caught him off guard and knocked the wind out of him, throwing him back into the main office floor through the destroyed open door behind him. Fortunately, the rounds came from a .22 pistol, not a shotgun so he recovered fast and snapped up the AR-15 to return fire.
But through the swirling smoke he saw Vargas standing very still.
And Talia’s outline right beside her.
He also saw she had her pistol jammed into the side of Vargas’ neck.
‘Drop the gun,’ Talia’s voice ordered.
This time, there was no chance she’d miss. Archer had no choice.
He let go of the assault rifle and it hit the floor.
A moment later, Talia swept the gun off Vargas and shot Archer again, hitting him in the vest and knocking him back another step. Vargas jolted as the pistol fired then Talia prodded her forward, pushing her into the main office. Reaching Archer, she turned and they both saw Talia more clearly as she walked towards them through the smoke.